"We live in a little piece of heaven called Ft. Lauderdale." So said Stan Eichelbaum, President of the Downtown Ft. Lauderdale Civic Association at a general meeting on Jan. 10,2013. The meeting featured a panel of four speakers who gave their own personal look at the changing face of the city.

One of these was Sam Poole, a partner in the law firm Berger Singerman who said it is "really critical to recover walkability" in Ft. Lauderdale. Poole said that many years ago "Andrews Avenue was our Main Street. Now there are only remnants left, such as the Himmarshee area just east of the Broward Centre for the Performing Arts."

He pointed to "the economic miracle" of San Antonio, Texas which has done a great job at making their inner city people-friendly. "Downtown is where you achieve cultural diversity," he said. "A critical missing element is slowing down the cars and making the streets outdoor rooms for people. It is how we have lived for 3,000 years- it's fundamentally a part of our DNA." He noted that the small parks in the area seem to be isolated from the nearby buildings. The use of green space, and more trees, is important to build a viable community.

Diversity was also the major theme of another speaker, Marvin Dejean, CEO of Gilead Sanders. "Diversity is going to be a whole new ballgame," he told the audience of about 40 members of the Association meeting at the Watergarden condo. "It's not just black and white anymore. Racial and ethnic lines are breaking down. We see a massive demographic shift in terms of the workforce in the next 20 to 30 years."

Among the trends that will affect Ft. Lauderdale is the growing Hispanic population of the country, expected to triple in the coming decades, an influx of Brazilians moving here, and the role of women becoming stronger in the workforce.

"US corporations are becoming globally based with people from other countries being brought here to work. It will become a multicultural, diverse workforce."

James Cook University in Townsville, Australia is the first university in the world to use a Bio-Regen unit, a machine that takes food scraps and turns them into a liquid bio-fertiliser.

Each year, JCU’s kitchens (including private colleges) produce close to 100 tonnes of food waste, according to JCU’s Environment Manager Adam Connell. That results in 380 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions when sent to landfill − as much as 84 cars on the road for a year.

The usual solution would be to start using a composter, but that still produces carbon emissions. So, where does that leave those wanting to do more to save the planet? JCU’s Environment Manager Adam Connell and Vital Resource Management’s Ken Bellamy have teamed up to tackle this issue.

“The number one thing on the ‘can’t be recycled’ list was food,” said Mr Bellamy.

“Since I’ve been in the industry food and organic waste has been the elephant in the room when discussing greenhouse gases and the cost of recycling. It’s the thing that’s never touched. “

Until now… Bellamy has invented the Bio-Regen unit, which turns food scraps into a liquid bio-fertiliser. Food waste gets put into the unit, which is about 1.5m tall and 40cm wide, and is pushed down a shoot with a wooden pole. It’s then processed into a liquid slurry and pumped to tanks outside. When the tanks are full the microbes are left to do their work for 28 days, converting the food into a product similar to apple cider vinegar. Bellamy’s team then empty the tanks and process the liquid into the fertiliser and give the final product back.

JCU’s Environment Manager Adam Connell had been aware of Bellamy’s work for quite awhile and jumped at the opportunity for JCU to be the first university in the world to use one of his systems.

“I’ve seen other universities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on composting machines only to have massive labour requirements to actually get an output,” Mr Connell said.

“Then I saw the Bio-Regen unit and thought it’s a low-cost, high-efficiency machine that gives you 100 per cent of the product back at the end,” Mr Connell said.

“You’re not losing anything in the process, like you do with composting, and it’s cutting down the cost for the university. We’ve basically wiped out all our cost of sending food waste to landfill, which is expensive and wasteful, especially now the government’s brought in a landfill levy.

“We’re turning something that’s cost us lots of money in the past into something that’s making us money.”

Mr Connell said the bio-fertiliser produced by the Bio-Regen unit will be used on JCU’s grounds to improve soil quality.

“And we’ll use it on our sports fields to make sure they’re growing well,” he said.

University Hall is currently the only JCU residential college using the Bio-Regen unit, but Connell and Bellamy are hoping for more to roll out to the other colleges soon.

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With fabric sales on an upswing, exhibitors left the semiannual Showtime fabric show here this week with the feeling that the upholstery industry has stabilized and is heading for better times. Fabric is the proverbial canary in the mineshaft, a harbinger of how the industry will do in the months ahead. According to several fabric executives, the gradual increase in orders has led upholstered furniture manufacturers to be more confident in projecting their fabric needs and some are even launching new programs. Several mill execs said traffic was strong in their showrooms, ahead of the past few Showtimes.

Some mills are even beginning to accumulate backlogs and run-ons for certain goods that factories predict will be popular, a step that hasn't been taken in recent times. Praesent ultrices magna eu nulla aliquet ullamcorper.